Business and Personal Gadgets for use in Second Life. You can expect useful tips, tricks, commentary, Q&A, and the occasional product update announcement.

Have you ever been shopping on Second Life marketplace only to not find the right item? You want to find a quality item, but the items you’ve looked at so far have zero reviews. The search engine built into the marketplace has limited filtering abilities. Fortunately, there is another method to find what you need.

Google can search the marketplace by adding the syntax site:websitename after search terms. For example, the following search term on marketplace returned around 71000 items while logged in and including all maturity levels.

Halloween

The following search terms at Google returned more than 89000 items.

Halloween site:marketplace.secondlife.com

You can take advantage of Google’s filtering to exclude specific words. For example, the following search terms on marketplace returned 3700 items.

Halloween -skeletons

Every item returned contains a variation of the word “skeleton” even though a minus sign means to exclude that word. The following search on Google returned 88000 items with none containing the word “skeleton”.

Halloween -skeletons site:marketplace.secondlife.com

The marketplace allows sorting results by “Rating: High to Low”, however this still returns fewer results than Google. Using Google to search marketplace with the following text returned 53000 items all having at least one review because it excludes items with zero reviews.

Halloween -“Reviews (0)” site:marketplace.secondlife.com

The same techniques can search most web sites including discussion forums, online shopping, and blogs. Speaking of blogs, to receive notices of updates to this blog please click the SignMeUp! button at the left side of the screen.

Visitors are arriving on your Second Life parcel regularly, however they are teleporting away after a few minutes without exploring the area. When you ask why they left so soon they explain that everything remained gray for too long and couldn’t see anything. They cannot read the signs or see the ground and so they leave.

The most important textures useful to visitors need to load into their cache first such as nearby signage describing the area and directions to go. This includes interactive objects giving out notecards, landmarks, and invites to your group. Use one of the following methods for preloading textures.

Identify prims with small faces visible to the avatar and apply textures from nearby signs to them. Small faces such as those found at the end of long skinny poles as well as arms of chairs are good candidates.

Identify prims having a larger face which serves no purpose and retexture with the same images. Finally, set that face fully transparent through the built-in editor (do not retexture with an alpha texture because that will replace the texture you had just placed on it)

Objects containing multiple prims often will have faces inside the object facing one another which are never visible to an avatar regardless of the angle they look at it. Move your camera inside that object, select just those inside faces, and retexture them with images from your signs.

Some locations need visitors to wear an HUD during their travels. Usually only one or two faces are visible on the screen leaving the top, sides, and backs of the HUD available for texture preloading. Place the HUD on level ground and zoom in with your camera to retexture other faces. Afterwards, take it back into inventory and provide copies to visitors.

Create a prism prim then hollow it, path cut it, and finally slice it in half. Now the prim has eight unique faces each containing a different texture. Change Z size to 64m resulting in the balance of the prim being 32m in length. After retexturing sink the prim under the surface leaving the center of the prim just aboveground.

You have just learned five methods of preloading textures and increasing the likelihood that important signage textures load into visitor’s caches first. Try combining multiple methods together at the same time. Alternatively, pick up a copy of SequenSlideshowV2 which combines method one and method five. Configuring this to preload will cycle textures among all eight faces.

A modern-style GACHA vending machine is now dispensing spinning top toys in various shapes and colors, there are eight available with two of them being rare. The vendor features single pricing (L$35) and quad pricing (four items for L$100) along with a visual display on the front showing the last three items received. Next to the vendor is a single-question survey kiosk asking what other items appropriate for a carnival/fair should be made available via GACHA machines. Stop by today and collect them all!

Quad Twist – This classic amusement park attraction is inspired by “Scrambler” and “Sizzler” attractions built from both prims and mesh objects with seating for 16 avatars. Once all avatars are seated visitors can cick the attraction which will begin spinning each of the four groups of four seats at high speeds. All prims and mesh are YesMod, YesCopy, NoTransfer allows the attraction owner to recolor and retexture at will while all scripts are NoMod, YesCopy, NoTransfer.

This classic amusement park attraction features a mesh carpet with lighting trim swung around in circles by four lamp-shaped support arms. Carpet seats a maximum of nine avatars and takes them on a 90 second journey against an Arabian background. Attraction&Scripts are NoMod, YesCopy, NoTransfer.

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The movement of prims within a virtual world is appropriate in many situations such as for show (i.e. parades) or as a form of transportation (i.e. trains) as well as entertaining avatars (i.e. amusement rides). Vehicle-Move System from Kerhop’s Innovations allows you to specify a starting location, smooth travel along a path, and the ending location of a prim with minimal editing of a notecard all without causing sim lag due to physics. Working examples of a parade, train, and amusement ride are all included for your review in preparation for your own creations. Now, with version two you can also create and sell your own attractions! All scripts are no-modify, but they are yes-copy/yes-trans (with restrictions).

What’s New in Version 2.0
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1) Create and Sell your own parades, transportation systems, or amusement rides. 2) Improved optimization of scripts means there is now minimal delay in between segments. 3) Enforces via script that creator of vehicle must be same avatar as movement programmer. 4) Removed implementation of showstartcircuit(), showfactorvars(), and showcurrentposrot()

The manner in which one displays and showcases products is extremely important. Potential customers and visitors may or may not be able to view a rezzed version of the product in-world, so the type of imaging used will make a tremendous difference. Taking a few things into consideration will help make sure that the product images are always making the best impact.

To ensure one is using the best product images, one might consider taking the extra step of hiring a professional photographer. While it might be an expensive initial cost, it can be well worth it. Even better is finding a photographer who is just starting out that can do the work at a fraction of the cost or willing to help in exchange for free items to build up their portfolio. Professional photographs for product images can make a tremendous difference.

If a professional photographer does not fit into the allocated budget, one can still get effective product images as long as the right techniques are used. Take the time to look at how other products are displayed for inspiration to recreate similar effects being careful not to copy their exact design and style. In addition, take the initiative to go the extra mile to photograph products from multiple angles in order to offer a variety of views to prospects.

Proper planning, professional pictures and an eye for what will draw in customers will be the best way to utilize effective product images.